ABSTRACT
Hangzhou Metropolitan Area in China and Copenhagen Metropolitan Area in Denmark are chosen as two cases. The rationale for case selection is partly that they are both ‘typical’ and ‘critical’. They are typical in the sense that Hangzhou is typical of many economically developed metropolises in China, and Copenhagen is similar to many city regions in Western Europe; lessons learned from the analysis of each city region can be assumed to represent an average and general situation in Western Europe and the more developed regions of China respectively. They are critical in the sense that cases meeting the conditions and prerequisites for testing a theory can be used to confirm, challenge or extend that theory (Yin, 2009). Belief in full decoupling is based partly on the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis that economic growth in a poor country will in the beginning be coupled with environmental degradation, but only until affluence reaches a certain level, after which environmental degradation will tend to decrease with increasing GDP. Hangzhou and in particular Copenhagen have a high level of affluence and renowned environmental policies. If full decoupling is not evident in these two cases, the theory of the possibility of full decoupling is significantly weakened. 1
